


At The Oasis

by alilactree



Category: Glee
Genre: 1930s, AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-15
Updated: 2014-01-15
Packaged: 2018-01-08 21:09:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 16,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1137416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alilactree/pseuds/alilactree
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 1932 America is still in the grips of the Great Depression and Blaine Anderson is fed up with his bland life in Lima, Ohio. When he decides to head to New York City in search of adventure he meets a performer named Kurt Hummel at an illegal speakeasy, and gets more excitement than he ever dreamed possible at The Oasis.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Old Fashioned

Graduation ends up being underwhelming, as far as major life events go. Names called, then a handshake. A smattering of applause. The mood is fitting of the sort of everyday solemnity that seems to have taken over the town. 

Blaine spends a few moments chatting with and embracing those left in his class who had made it this far instead of dropping out months or years earlier to work or move away to mythical greener pastures. 

He empties his locker, tucks his rolled up diploma under his arm and heads down the hallway. The drooping banner over the exit reads Congratulations Allen County Regional High Class of ’32 and when Blaine releases the heavy iron doors it flutters like the ghost it is.

The door closes with heavy thud and final click and he feels like he should be saying goodbye to his childhood or his potential or the safety of school, but he mostly feels relieved. 

Now he can finally get on with his life.

Hopping on and off the curb in front of his house, he waits for Mr. Jenkins, collects the mail with a smile and makes the customary three minutes of polite conversation, wonders, as usual, how much faster the mail would be delivered if not for ingrained small town manners. How much faster the entire town would move. He shakes hands, wishes a pleasant evening, and goes inside.

“Did your information packet from Ohio State arrive yet?”

His mother is in the kitchen, not in an apron and house frock but dolled up for a night out; red knit dress and matching velvet hat, the one Blaine and Cooper got her for Christmas.

“Not yet,” Blaine says. “You look nice.”

He moves to the table, sets down his school bag and the stack of bills, a magazine, a couple of catalogues.

“Thank you.” His mom smiles widely, rouged red lips, the dainty feathers of her hat dancing in the lazy breeze from the fan in the corner. “Your father is taking me dancing. Haven’t been out in ages. You know how he’s always working late these days.”

She hums as she flips through the mail, frowns when she reaches the bills but then notices Blaine watching her, so the happy mask quickly returns.

Giving up on the mail for now, she comes over to kiss the top of his head, the thick floral tones of her perfume curling around him. Blaine holds his breath and closes his eyes and feels like needs to bottle up the moment. Like he needs to keep it tucked close. Like he’ll forget.

“There’s stew on the stove. Clean your room before you go out.” She turns and wiggles her fingers in a wave, and she’s beautiful like this, momentarily free from worry, from fear. He wants to remember her exactly as she is in this moment.

He eats alone as dusk settles in.

“My folks have the car. Come pick me up.”

Blaine keeps the record in a chest at the foot of his bed, under a quilt and a stack of Boy’s Life magazines, then under that an article about the construction of the Empire State Building starting to yellow at the edges. And under that a jagged-edged picture of Clark Gable that Blaine tore out from one of his mother’s magazines in a rush and hid under his pillow for more nights than he’d like to admit to.

The record starts with a skip and a crackle and a hop-jump of notes until the needle settles. He sits at the piano, fingers dancing across the keys, playing along with the song that feels like it’s settled in his soul, and the frantic intro of Duke Ellington’s Mood Indigo fills the sitting room.

He bought it himself, one copy hidden away in a dusty case at Woolworth’s. He’d raced home to gather all of his birthday money, all of his pennies saved from glass bottles and extra chores. Had placed the record down on the counter with sweaty palms and a racing heart; it was that song, the one he’d heard on the radio one night after he’d snuck downstairs late after bedtime. Before Cooper left for Hollywood. Because Cooper was with a girl. And a little blackmail was never a bad idea.

But whatever Cooper was doing on the couch with that girl didn’t matter, not when there was piano and horns and a barbaric, brash rhythm like Blaine had never heard, never imagined. He’d stood frozen, goose-bumped skin and rapid breath. 

It was exciting. It was intoxicating. It was New York.

The blare of a car horn breaks him from his thoughts, so he finishes the last flourish of high notes and his imaginary band fades away. He returns the record to its hiding place and dashes out into the hushed, humid night.

“What are we doing here, Quinn?”

“We’re parking,” Quinn replies, reaching to flick the dangling line of cigarette ash out of the Ford’s open window. “Well, sort of.”

Blaine releases a heavy breath, looks around the abandoned farm-turned-lover’s lane. The dark shapes from a handful of other cars line the perimeter of the barren fields, and the rusted equipment rests abandoned, like slumbering beasts.

“No, I mean here. In Lima. What are we doing here?”

Quinn blows a line of smoke, considers him in the darkness. “I’d say we’re trying to get by just like everyone else.”

He says nothing, watches the smoke plume and listens to the crickets chirp in the distant woods. Quinn is beautiful and relaxed out here, the strains of being proper and polite and a lady, always a lady, drifting away into the sky speckled with stars. He could. He could force himself. They could get by. 

That’s exactly the problem.

“People used to be excited by life,” he says finally, after the orange glow of the cigarette has been stamped out, after a few of the cars rumble to life and drive back to town. “What happened to experiencing all the world had to offer? Travel and parties and torrid love affairs? What changed?”

She turns to face him, one leg tucked under the other, she’s sad and serious and far too weary for someone whose life should just be starting. “Blaine. Everything changed.”

His throat closes, he shakes his head and cranes to look up at the night sky. “I’m being selfish.”

“Maybe.” Quinn takes his hand. “Maybe that’s not so bad, every once in a while.”

“Yeah,” Blaine whispers.

It is so wrong, so awful? So much to ask for, to see something of the world before he joins the everyone else in resignation. Before he hides away the most sacred parts of himself, under Mood Indigo and Clark Gable, tucked away forever in the bottom of a cedar chest?

“I got into Barnard College,” Quinn says, after a long stretch of silence.

“Quinn that’s wonderful!” At least if he can’t get out, at least- But she doesn’t look happy at all, laughs bitterly as tears gather and she swipes them away.

“No. It’s-” Swallows and sniffs, and tries to regain composure. “I only applied because my father said- He said I wouldn’t dare. That I knew my place and I was angry and just to spite him- I never thought I’d actually get in.”

“I don’t understand.” Blaine squeezes her hand, it trembles in his grasp.

“It’s because he’s right. I do know my place,” she says, voice low and quiet. “And now I can see it. This whole future that I’ll never have. And it makes it so much worse.”

The slow-burn desperation builds in Blaine’s chest to a bright, consuming fire. This is his chance. Their chance.

“We’ll go together.” New York City. The people, the excitement, the opportunities, the music. “Have an adventure, eh?”

Quinn smiles, drops his hand and starts up the car, says “Sure.” And if she doesn’t sound sure at all, Blaine fails to notice.

He doesn’t stop to think, just packs his suitcase with clothes and hats, ties and shoes, shampoo and pomade and his toothbrush and toothpaste. He secures Duke Ellington between the soft layers, gives Clark Gable one last kiss on his paper cheek. He leaves a note for his parents. He loves them. He’ll be back soon. Please don’t worry. Please don’t be disappointed.

He walks to the thick trunked oak down two blocks where they agreed to meet. Waits for Quinn. Waits and waits. Hopes the last bus doesn’t leave early. He’s considering going to her house and throwing pebbles at her window to get her moving when he notices the paper under a rock.

I’m not going. Don’t stay here for me. I need you to be adventurous enough for the both of us. All My Love. 

~Quinn.

P.S. I expect full details of any and all torrid love affairs.

Blaine takes the ten pm bus to New York City. Stows his trunk and settles in. He doesn’t look back. Not yet.

Old-fashioned

-dissolve a sugar cube with a splash of water

-add two dashes bitters

-add ice and small piece lemon peel

-one jigger whiskey

-stir


	2. The Manhattan

Blaine feels like a live wire, cracking and sparking with electricity, and he spends the entire ride from Lima to Cleveland in this state of giddy agitation; fingers gripped to the leather seat, springs squeaking beneath him with the non-stop bouncing of his right leg. 

After hauling his suitcase off of the smaller bus and onto the impressive, sleek Greyhound bound for New York his excitement has finally settled down to a low continuos current. This is it. He’s on his way.

The bus pulls away from the station and Blaine squints at his fellow passengers in the dark. Some businessmen, hats pulled low over their eyes, arms crossed on their chests. Probably settling in for a familiar trek. An older couple that brought along brown-wrapped packages tied with brightly colored string and a bag of sharp-scented oranges. Going to see…grandchildren? Perhaps. Other young men. Stoic and still, watching quietly as city changes to rolling countryside. Off for adventures unknown.

He tries to sleep, curls and uncurls his body in increasingly uncomfortable positions as the hours wear on. Finally he gives up and settles for watching the sliver of waning moon resting just over the treetops. 

He’s startled awake after a deep, dreamless sleep by the screech of brakes and the low, gruff shout of the bus driver. He rubs his eyes against the sunlight streaming in from the window that his face has been smashed against for hours; his body twisted and sore in the corner of the seat. And it isn’t until he’s stumbled off the bus, shuffling along with his suitcase dragging on the gritty pavement behind him, unthinking and hazy from sleep; has walked into a coursing river of pedestrians and is finally pulled from his half-aware state by the blare of a car horn that he realizes. 

He made it.

He’s here.

New York City.

Blaine stops and stares, looks around and up. And up and up. New York is what he expected, in a way. Huge and bustling and teeming with people of all sorts and types. Flashing lights and lines of honking cars, towering skyscrapers and shouting street vendors and carts plied with vegetables and apples. It’s what he always dreamed it would be. Only he had never expected it to be so entirely unfathomable.

“Oh, excuse me!” 

He’s bumped from behind, then the side. Neither person stopping to hear his apology, so Blaine decides now would be a really swell time to stop standing in the middle of the sidewalk and gaping like the awed and overwhelmed country boy that he is. Maybe it’s time for a plan.

He decides to walk a few more blocks in the same direction he’d been walking in, for no other reason than it seems silly to turn around. He passes laundromats and tailors, butcher shops and office buildings and high-rise apartments. Walks by a raucous group of little boys; scrappy and skinny, with knobby knees and scabbed elbows peeking out under worn clothing. He stops to watch for a moment, stepping back out of the way to press against the cool brick of a building.

It could have been he and his friends, not all that long ago in the vacant lot behind the primary school. They’d spend hours out there; kicking up dirt, perfecting their knuckleballs. Arguing over which one of them got to be Babe Ruth that afternoon. Blaine smiles as a tall boy with tufted red hair swings a stick, a sharp crack as it connects with a rounded rock, then a clang when the rock hits an iron fence in the alley beyond.

“Hey, mister. Shoe shine, mister?”

Blaine looks away to find another boy, smaller than the group playing stickball and dark haired with wide brown eyes, holding a box and brush in his outstretched hands.

“Oh, um. No thank you.” Blaine smiles, goes to step around him, but the boy matches the movement.

“Newspaper mister?” 

Blaine starts to say no, to join the rest of the adults; jaded and unmoved and caught up in their own troubles to pay this boy any mind. He smiles, nods. “Alright, sure.”

He fishes out a nickel, feels pretty good about saying, “Keep the change,” and doesn’t even point out that the paper is from two days ago and wrinkled from being previously read.

He tucks the paper into his back pocket and turns the corner at the end of the block where he spots a sign for a diner across the street.

The waitress is tall and imposing, clad in a crisp white uniform with thick round glasses and hair in a tight bun. She stares over the top of Blaine’s head at his table near the window, snaps her gum and asks in a lifeless monotone, “What’ll it be, doll?”

“Eggs, please. Scrambled. And toast. Oh, and coffee? Black.” 

She scribbles down his order, snaps her gum again and turns away while Blaine is thanking her. Blaine blinks and shrugs, then spreads the newspaper flat across the tabletop.

Details of a robbery, op-ed about the economy. News of ongoing bridge construction. Small developments in the Lindberg case. He scans quickly, flips the pages and tucks the sports section into his suitcase for later, then finally finds the classifieds at the bottom of the back page.

He could stay at a hotel, he thinks, as he eats his eggs and sips his bitter coffee. But the ten dollars he has left- graduation gifts sent from relatives and old family friends- felt like a lot of money back in Lima. But a room for five dollars a night doesn’t give him much time for, well. Anything really.

He doesn’t need to lease an apartment for a year. Isn’t quite sure what a boarding house involves. But maybe…

Room for rent. Monthly. 

Must be clean and responsible 

and above all a true connoisseur of the arts. 

122 W. 127th. $10 incl. all

And whatever he expected when he climbed the stairs and knocked on the door to 122 W. 127th after spending the better part of the morning getting lost, it was not a rather tiny young woman with dark hair pinned in tight curls to her head and eyes lined with black makeup peering out at him through a crack in the door. 

“Hello?” Blaine says, extending a hand as her eyes narrow even further. “I’m terribly sorry for just showing up but I saw your ad for a room?”

The door slams closed and Blaine jolts back in surprise. He falters for a moment, lifts his hand to knock again, but thinks better of it and lowers it. Should he go? But where would he go? He has a brief moment of panic. He did not think this through, why didn’t he wait and plan and oh god what if he ends up living in a shack in one of those encampments he’s heard about and he has to call his parents to get him and oh god, his parents.

The door swings open again.

“Oh, thank you. Again I apolog-” Blaine starts, but he’s cut off by a titled head and pointed finger.

She must be around his age, and nice looking in a very distinctive way that Blaine finds he rather likes. She asseses him shrewdly, looks him over and turns her head this way and that as Blaine fidgets and straightens his clothes, pulls his bow tie tighter and pulls at his suspenders.

“I’m Rachel,” she finally says, extending her hand and shaking his heartily, then cutting him off again as she continues. “Singer, actress, siren of the stage. I’m also a very astute judge of character. Come in.”

Blaine is taken aback, confused and sort of bowled over, but follows her into the apartment regardless. He feels like Rachel somehow embodies the entirety of the scope and scale and magnitude of New York in a very small package. He’s instantly fond of her. She reminds him of Quinn, a bit.

The place is small, but neat, with a sunny window facing the street, a couch and chair and side table with a radio perched on top. The kitchen is barely more than a closet, and the spare bedroom not much bigger still. A twin bed, a dresser with a mirror that’s thick and distorted at the edges, a woven rug, a washbasin. 

Blaine sets his suitcase on the bed, happy to finally be rid of its weight, and looks around with his hands on his hips.

“It’s nice,” he says.

“Ten dollars. Up front. And due the first of every month you want to stay, but please inform me in advance.” Rachel moves around the room with rearranges some pillows, pulls the quilt up higher. “I also realize this is somewhat…unconventional. But I do need the extra income, and I am a modern woman. We’ll need to get to know each other some, of course.” She lifts her head then, gives Blaine that steely look she had before through the crack in door, and it sort of has the effect of chilling him right to the bone.

“Of course,” Blaine rushes to say.

“But you are rather disarmingly handsome.”

“Um. Thank you. Ma’am.” Blaine scratches the back of his neck just for something to do.

“And very polite so-” She smiles then, claps her hands in excitement and it somehow doesn’t make him feel any better. “I think we’ll get along just fine Mister, um-”

“Blaine. Blaine Anderson. From Ohio.”

“Well then Mister Blaine Anderson from Ohio. Welcome to New York.”

Blaine smiles and flops down on the bed with a gust of air. He’s here. He loves it already. He has a place to stay. He thinks he may have already made a friend. He’s pretty sure this is the best decision he’s ever made in his life. There’s just one problem:

He is now completely out of money. It’s time for a new plan.

Manhattan

-2 parts rye whiskey

-to 1 part sweet vermouth

-2 dashes bitters

-Stir with ice. Strain into a cocktail glass.


	3. The Bee's Knees

Stretched out on his bed, hands resting folded on his stomach, Blaine tries to think. Mostly he broods and sighs and chastises himself, just a bit. Finally, he sits up and sets his jaw and starts a letter on some of Rachel’s fancy pink flowered stationary, scribbles a few doodles and pointless squiggles, then balls it up and throws it away.

Makes himself go into the living room and pick up the phone and even gets as far as the operator asking him for the number he’s trying to reach before he hangs up.

He’s trying to reasonable, and the reasonable thing to do would be to call his parents, apologize for taking off like a thief in the dead of night and ask for money to get home. He could help out at the grocer or the bus factory for the summer to pay them back, then go to college in the fall. 

And Blaine is a reasonable person, he is. Class president Blaine Anderson. Honor Roll student. Polite and well mannered and voted “Kindest Smile” and “Most Conscientious” for the Senior Superlatives. 

That, of course, is exactly why he doesn’t do it.

So he puts on the only suit he packed- his graduation suit- and heads out on whim, seeing as whims are what have gotten him this far in the first place.

“Where are you off to looking so dapper?” Rachel pauses in the middle of a vocal run, standing by the window with her hands resting on her diaphragm, chest puffed out, late afternoon sun dipping low in the horizon behind her.

“I’m going to find a job,” Blaine says, matter of fact.

“You and half of New York,” Rachel mutters.

Blaine frowns and hesitates with his hand on the door knob as Rachel starts to sing again, her voice robust and clear and filling every inch and corner of the apartment.

“You’re really amazing,” Blaine says sincerely. “A voice like that, you ought to have your own primetime radio show.”

Rachel turns and beams at him. “I knew I liked you for a reason. Flattery will get you everywhere.”

Blaine winks and tips his hat in her direction. She laughs, but then turns serious; worrying her lower lip and crossing her arms.

“Okay, listen,” she starts, crossing to the tiny kitchen and rooting around in a drawer. She finds a page of newspaper and writes something in the corner of a colorful ad for cigarettes. 

“A friend of mine is looking for some help. Follow these directions. It’s a Brownstone, and it looks like any old house, but whatever you do, do not knock on the front door.”

She rips the corner off, waves it front of Blaine’s face until he takes it, then lowers her voice and leans in closer.

“Go around to the cellar. Knock six times, no more, no less. Ask for Puck. Tell him Rachel sent you.”

“O…kay…” Blaine takes the scrap of paper and for just a moment he thinks about the fact that he doesn’t know Rachel, not really, and that she could be sending him anywhere in this huge city that he also doesn’t know. It’s insane and irrational and he is absolutely doing it.

Blaine tips his hat again, wishes Rachel a pleasant evening and thanks her as he closes the door behind him. He’s at the top of the staircase when she opens the door, pokes her head out and yells, “Just remember: This isn’t Ohio!”

Blaine nods, and really, that’s sort of the entire point.

It turns to dusk as he walks, the heat of the day lingering humid as the sky darkens and lights come on with a pop and a hum. He stops himself from looking around and taking everything in, just puts his head down and quickens his steps to keep with the rest of the city. 

He double checks his paper, then turns down a quiet street lined with thin green-topped trees and row after row of stately townhomes. He runs his hand along the railing of a front fence, squints at the address and steps to the side to avoid a bicycle parked out front. 

The windows are lit up from within and Blaine imagines families having dinner or settled in around the radio for the evening news. Maybe a couple reuniting after a long day apart, with low music on in the background and dinner abandoned as they sway cheek-to-cheek in the middle of their kitchen.

The house he’s looking for is near the end of the block, darkened and quiet and fairly unremarkable. He remembers Rachel’s instructions and goes around and behind the wide, curving staircase to the main level. He knocks six times, no more, no less, on the heavy iron door hidden in a dark corner.

A narrow slit of light appears in the top, then a pair of eyes.

“Um. Puck? I’m here to see Puck.” 

The light vanishes and there’s a shout, then a series of bangs, then more shouting. Blaine rocks back and forth on his toes, whistles a little as he waits. Finally the door creaks open with a gruff, “Who’s lookin’ for Puck?”

Blaine finds himself yanked up by the front of his shirt, his boots dangling just over the packed dirt of the ground below, hat knocked off.

“Uh- I-” He tries. He’s shaken, once, held captive by some ruffian with huge arms and strange hair and a dangerous scowl. Blaine gasps for breath and squirms and kicks his feet.

“Rachel,” He pants out, vision going dark and starry as the guy yanks him up higher by his collar.

Then drops Blaine all at once, making him stumble and hit his shoulder off the side of the house.

Blaine pushes off the wall, raises his fists and ignores the ache and burn in his shoulder. He doesn’t want any trouble, he didn’t come here for that. But he didn’t come to be pushed around either.

“Scrappy. I like it.” The ruffian says, then comes over to clap Blaine on the back. “Come on in.”

Blaine follows after a moment, unthinking, adrenaline still pumping through his veins. He takes a deep breath and smoothes out his clothes.

It’s cooler inside, all bare cement and darkness, save for the yellow light of a single bulb hanging from the ceiling. The floor slopes down to a large drain in the center and in the back are wooden barrels, stacks of crates, and huge vats of liquid. A shiver runs cold down Blaine’s spine.

“When I told Rachel I needed some runners I figured the part about them being leggy, blonde and busty was implied,” Pucks says, looking at Blaine with stark disappointment.

Blaine ignores his fear and misgivings, pushes right through them to say, indignant, “Yeah well, I figured the part about not being jumped by a thug was implied when I told her I’d come here,” Blaine retorts, giving his shirt a final tug back to rights.

Pucks laughs, to Blaine’s surprise, and slings an arm over his shoulders, leading him through a pair double doors painted a shocking shade of red. “Can never be too careful around here.” 

“And what exactly is-” Blaine’s question trails away as it dawns on him. Where Rachel sent him. The reason for her mysterious instructions. Puck’s defensive reaction. 

The ordinary basement of an ordinary home has been transformed so that Blaine is almost convinced those red doors led him right into another world. A world that only exists in movies or in dreams. 

The walls are done in all red and gold, the ceiling in a glinting silver that reflects the regal hue and shimmering chandeliers. The floor under their feet is dark hardwood, shined and slick, and the whole space is long and narrow with round cloth covered tables taking up most of the floor space. They wind their way through until they reach the back where a stage and a piano are set up in the left corner, with long rectangle bar taking up the one opposite.

Puck goes behind the bar, retrieves a silver tray and plunks it down on the high bar top. “It’s simple: You take drink orders. Take the drinks to table. Bring the empties to the back. Repeat.”

Blaine tries to respond, but the words seem to get stuck in his throat. He hasn’t put much thought into the prohibition laws, himself. Lima was pretty much dry, and most everyone seemed to be fine with that. He knows it’s controversial, though. He’s heard about the protests and the logic behind doing away with it. Even his father, by all accounts a model upstanding citizen, has ranted a time or two about the government overstepping and over-moralizing.

Still. It is against the law to sell alcohol. And above Puck’s head is bottle after bottle of contraband liquor.

“Please don’t tell me I need to explain that again. I mean, I know Rachel likes ‘em dumb, but honestly-”

“No,” Blaine says, “I understand.”

“Swell,” Puck responds dryly, then turns away to start grabbing bottles off the shelves. “Don’t answer the door, don’t ask questions, and outside of these walls this place doesn’t exist.” Blaine nods, feels a bit like a puppet on a string; nods and nods. “Oh, and you’re working for tips. So make it worth their while, yeah?”

He doesn’t understand what Puck means, not entirely. Unless he’s supposed to be polite and fastidious, which he’s pretty much got down already. 

Blaine looks around again, shakes his head to himself and laughs. It’s absurd, the whole thing. What is he doing? He’s either breaking the law or aiding and abetting it, at the very least. He’s been here one day. Not Ohio, indeed.

For the first few hours he mostly stands near the bar, one foot propped up on the brass railing at the bottom, as a few customers trickle in through the magical red doors.

A few men sit at the stools along the bar and order drinks that Blaine has never heard of and a few he has. He watches Puck work with a steady efficiency; slinging around bottles and glasses and garnishes like a one man assembly line.

The place starts to fill up with people, with conversation and clinks of glasses; laughter and wild gesturing and dancing. The piano starts up with an upbeat song Blaine recognizes immediately: Gershwin.

Blaine watches the piano player for a little while, watches his fingers move with practiced ease as his face retains an edge of bitter indifference. 

Soon he feels comfortable enough to join the other runners and heads to a table full of women; loud and brash and wearing the sort of clothes that would make the people of Lima, Ohio pass dead away from the scandal of it all. “Good evening, ladies. What can I get for you this fine evening?” 

“About time they got some eye candy for the fairer sex around here,” one of them says, leaning back in her chair to get a better view.

Blaine clears his throat, shuffles behind a chair. They order and Blaine struggles to write everything down correctly, some of the drinks sound like they’ve made them up on the spot as a joke. The piano music stops, then starts up louder and now with a band as he works, forcing him to lean in close to hear.

Fingertips linger on his wrist and drinks are murmured into his ear. He realizes what Puck meant about earning his tips and ratchets up the charm. May as well go all in.

A group of dancers appears and fans out across the stage, and if the women at the table are dressed scandalously, the dancer’s outfits must be downright illegal. Blaine slides the drink order for his table across the bar and watches the show while he waits.

They’re good, engaging and flirting with the crowd. They have huge feathers that cover their mostly bare bodies, only offering a purposeful glimpse every now and then that works the crowd into a frenzy. 

Blaine feels his mood matching the energy of the place; he dances in time to the music back to the table, tray held high and drinks wobbling precariously. Everything is frantic and surreal; a tilting and twirling of colors and sounds to frantic bass beat.

He went through a pirate phase once when he was a kid, after reading Treasure Island. He’d spent months drawing treasure maps, searching for gold and staging mutinies on the high seas in the backyard next to his mother’s vegetable garden. He got a spy-glass for his birthday that year. It was small and tin and didn’t work, not really. Just a tube of hollow blackness narrowed down to a pin prick of light.

That’s the only way to describe what it feels like, when Blaine sees him.

The dancers line around the edge of the stage, then file back in symmetry behind him. He sets his broad shoulders and raises his arms and sings, and the world collapses around Blaine. A tunnel of darkness. And in the pinprick of light. Him.

Blaine watches with feet rooted to the ground and breath quick in his chest and when the music stops and the stage starts to clear Blaine takes a breath like he’s just come up from a dive deep beneath the sea.

“I’m Kurt Hummel,” He says in a high, clear voice. “And I hope you all find what you’ve been searching for, here at The Oasis.”

All Blaine can focus on is the sudden desperation to meet Kurt Hummel, to know him, to shake his hand and look into his eyes and never, ever stop. And there is absolutely nothing reasonable about that.

Bee’s Knees

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1 teaspoon honey

1 jigger gin

shake with ice, strain into glass. Garnish with lemon peel.


	4. The Ants In The Pants

Blaine stands enraptured through Kurt’s entire set, only blinking back to awareness when the stage lights shut off with a decisive thunk. He follows the cluster of feathered dancers trailing behind Kurt and doesn’t know what he’s going to do or say, but shuffles along regardless, when a hand smacks him in the chest.

“No following the girls.” Puck, who’s slipped out from behind the far end of the bar. “Trust me I’ve tried.” 

Puck moves back to serve more drinks as the door leading to a dark staircase closes. Blaine stares at it a moment. Later. He’ll find him later.

He does his best to shake off thoughts of this man and his voice and command of the stage, plasters on his best show smile and gets back to work. The night is starting to wind down, some customers leaving, others settling into quiet conversation, and few of them have passed out cold; slumped over the tables or bar counter, only to be dragged out to the street by the doorman, Jake. 

Soon it’s just him and Jake and Puck. He’s watched the band leave, the other runners, the dancers. No Kurt Hummel. 

“You comin’ kid?” Puck asks, shutting down the lights and swinging a thick metal key ring around his finger. 

Blaine looks around one last time, says with a sigh, “yeah.”

He’s shocked to see the sun starting to rise shyly in the pink morning sky when he steps out. Had he really been there all night? Is this what he came here for? To moon over some guy? 

Blaine says goodnight to Puck and Jake, who turn out to be brothers and live nearby, and counts his tips. He made three dollars, which is not too shabby. But on the downside, he can’t find his hat. 

Blaine kicks at the empty patch of dirt outside the door, suddenly exhausted and overwhelmed at everything that’s happened, so he uses some of his earnings to take his very first ride in a New York City taxi cab and goes back to Rachel’s.

The next day is Sunday. Blaine sleeps in later than he has in his entire life and feels decadent and sinful, stretching out on the mattress until his feet hang off either side. 

The Oasis that night is more like a barren desert, earning him a scant fifty cents and a business card slipped into his pocket. 

No Kurt Hummel who proves to be just as enigmatic for the rest of the week, not a sign of a him, not a whisper, until Blaine is starting to think he simply dreamed him up. Only, even in his wildest dreams, he never would have imagined a man like that.

Every day Blaine doesn’t see him is more agonizing. An itch just out of reach, a restlessness at night in his too hot bed, with the sheets twisted around his legs and sweat beading his brow.

This is more than the slow, creeping realization that he preferred broad shoulders and a tapered waist to soft, feminine curves. That kissing Quinn felt nice, but nothing more. So much stronger than a hopeless crush on his best friend. This was desire, hot and electric, settling in his bones and thrumming needy between his legs. 

He and Rachel mostly pass like lost ships in the night; he comes in to sleep as the city awakens, and she’s either in for the night or out with company when he heads to work. 

On Friday morning Blaine decides to do some sightseeing. He takes the ferry out to see Lady Liberty; briny air ruffling his hair out of place and coating his lips with salt. He climbs the steps to the crown, looks out across the water where so many came with little more than the clothes on their backs and a wish in their hearts.

This is a city of dreamers. Maybe Blaine doesn’t know exactly what his dream is, or who. But as he watches the sun dance along the gentle waves, the backdrop of the city skyline behind him, he knows he’ll find it.

A man with a thick accent and bushy mustache is selling souvenirs in a booth on the way out. Painted tin plaques and tiny Statue of Liberty figurines, postcards and photographs. He buys two postcards, one for his parents, one for Quinn.

Having a great time! Be home soon! In looping cursive on one. Then he sets the pen between his teeth and squats down lower against the fence he’s leaning on. He wants to write I miss you. I believe in you. You are stronger than you think. But in the end he just scrawls, messy, 

Q-

Wish you were here

-B

He carefully puts the addresses, to and from, on the cards and sends them off in the nearest green mailbox.

That night he makes it through two knocks at The Oasis, fist still held up in the air as the door is wrenched open and he’s forced to stumble back onto the sidewalk. Puck walks out backwards, holding someone under the arms, Jake holding up his ankles on the other end. They set him down against the side of a house and Jake goes off to hail a cab.

“A little early to be out on the street,” Blaine observes. The club isn’t even open yet. It’s not even completely dark, the sky still dusky blue with just a hint of the crescent moon.

But it isn’t a patron. It’s the piano player. 

“I’m surprised he’s still breathing,” Puck says, catching him as he starts to list to the side. “Got into the moonshine, of all things.”

“It’s so hard to find good, honest deviants willing to work under the table in an illegal dive bar these days,” tuts a voice from the door.

A woman with cropped hair in a smart, wide-legged pinstripe suit stands against the curve of the bannister, smoking a cigarette in a long black holder, a golden flask clipped to her belt. 

“Sorry about that, Sue. Jake was…distracted.”

She sneers, pointing the smoldering end of the cigarette dangerously close to Puck’s nose. “My girls are not a distraction, they are only thing keeping this hell-hole running and Jake would do well to remember that some people are a lot more expendable.”

Pucks hastens to agree, and Blaine is torn between watching in horror and running far, far away.

A cab pulls up then, Blaine decides to make himself useful by helping load the piano player into the back where he snuffles, mumbles something that sounds like I hate all of you, then curls up into a ball. Blaine slams the door closed, then watches it until it disappears from view.

Sue is still standing there, hands on hips. “Someone tell Porcelain that he’ll have to change his set list, shake his ass around to the dulcet tones of the tuba, seeing as we have no pianist.”

Blaine blurts it out, before he’s had a chance to consider just how wise it is to draw attention to himself, but, “I can play.”

She barely looks at him, just flicks him an unimpressed gaze, then looks at Puck who shrugs. 

“Well,” she drawls, turning to go back inside, “I am feeling charitable today and, despite the fact that your face is mostly eyes and you appear to be a prepubescent twelve year old, I’ll allow it.”

She’s gone with a swoop of her coat, like a villain in a silent film, and Blaine grins, giddy. He’s going to play, in a real club, with a real band. And this, this is why he’s here.

“Forget scrappy, you’re insane,” Puck says, when they’re at the bar. 

“Maybe,” Blaine agrees. And maybe, maybe. But it feels great, feels wild. “Who was that, anyway?”

Puck pulls down two bottles of liquor and a martini glass. “Sue Sylvester,” he says, like that explains everything. Blaine raises his brows, waiting for Puck to go on. “She owns the place. Has owned many of these places. She’s on some pretty serious wanted lists, but she always manages to slip away to terrorize for another day.”

He puts the bottles back, throws an olive in the clear liquid and then drinks it all down in one gulp.

“Wow,” Blaine says. He can see it, she seems like an outlaw. He feels like he’s in a movie. Cooper would be so jealous. “Hey, is that any good?”

Pucks wipes his mouth off and holds up the empty glass in question. “Sure. But if you’re looking for something to calm your nerves, I’ve got just the thing.”

He’s not, not particularly, but he has been pretty curious about all the drinks he’s been carrying back and forth. More curious about the way it makes everyone loose and happy and silly.

People start to trickle in as Puck mixes him a drink, the evening starting up. Blaine takes a sip. It’s sweet and tart and burns his nose, trickles warm down his throat and settles in his belly with a swoop. He licks the drops clinging to his lips, then swallows the rest down. It simmers heat through his body and makes his breath catch and the room spin.

He crosses to the stage, slides onto the smooth piano bench, settles himself with his back straight and feet on the pedals and launches into a frenetic ragtime song, only aware of the flying of his hands and the blast of the music.

He’s fuzzy and warm and his head is a hive of buzzing bees. He plays and plays, and has to give credit to his crotchety old piano teacher and her quick-swatting ruler for the fact that he doesn’t miss a single note when a voice whispers low in his ear, 

“Know any Ellington?”

It’s him. God, of course it’s him. Blaine can only nod and play, the band coming in at Kurt’s cue to It Don’t Mean A Thing. 

He plays and the band swells and Kurt sings, and they are the only people in the entire world, despite The Oasis being now filled to the brim. Blaine knows it’s part of the act, the way Kurt drapes himself over the piano, how he skims Blaine’s shoulders with long fingers as he struts past.

That doesn’t make it any less thrilling. 

Kurt finishes his set, thanks the crowd and says again, “I hope you find what you’ve been looking for.”

Blaine closes the lid over the ivory keys. He’s found what he’s looking for, and even better, what he didn’t even know he wanted.

But when he looks up, Kurt is gone. Blaine looks around the crowded space feeling sluggish and dumb and shaking with frustration and why- 

Why does he keep dreaming about something he can never have?

Ants In The Pants

2 parts gin

1 part orange flavored brandy

1 part sweet vermouth

2 dashes lemon juice

shake with ice, strain into a cocktail glass


	5. The Thunderclap

The stage lights darken and the band members disperse. Blaine knows Kurt has likely gone upstairs again. He could go after him. Keep chasing him for reasons he’s starting to forget under the numbing haze of the alcohol.

He finds himself back at the bar again, tells Puck, “Another.” Puck gives him a brief look of concern, but serves him up another one of the sweet drinks.

He downs it, it’s easier this time, doesn’t close his throat up quite so tight. The place is still packed, raucous and loud so Blaine has to squeeze in between two men at the only open spot.

“Well hello there.”

Blaine looks up sluggishly, his thoughts dragging through quicksand. He blinks and turns and oh. It’s the man from before. The one who gave Blaine his card along with a slick, spreading grin.

“ ‘lo,” Blaine gets out. He frowns. Tries again. “H-Hello.”

“I was hoping to catch you tonight. You’re very impressive.” He’s tall and lanky, sharp featured and handsome despite the way he seems to be eyeing Blaine with an obvious hunger; a shark circling its prey. 

“I- Thank you,” Blaine manages, ingrained manners overcoming his discomfort. 

The man offers his hand, shakes Blaine’s firmly and just this side of too long. “Sebastian Smythe. Can I buy you a drink?”

And Blaine may be young, and maybe he is a little naive and idealistic. But even he can’t mistake the obvious intention, exactly what Sebastian is interested in and it’s both thrilling and terrifying and Kurt-

Kurt feels like little more than a figment of his imagination.

So when Blaine nods and says, “Sure,” his voice only shakes a little bit.

The results of this decision come back to him the next morning in bits and pieces. First is the jarring realization that when he forces his eyes open and squints against the morning light, he is looking at wallpaper that is not the wallpaper in his room at Rachel’s. He pushes his face into a pillow that is not his, on a bed that is bigger and softer and doesn’t squeak under his weight when he manages to roll himself over.

His head pounds and his stomach churns and all he can do is groan and take slow, deep breaths. He remembers Sebastian buying him a drink that he didn’t recognize. He remembers drinking it and shuddering at its strength. He remembers Puck giving him that look of concern again and-

Nothing.

A toilet flushes. A sink turns on then off again. Blaine realizes that the door to his left is a bathroom, and that someone is in there.

He sits up in a panic, then regrets that pretty quickly when his head throbs and wave of nausea rushes through his body. He clamps his hands over his mouth, squeezes his eyes shut and oh god, what has he done? He never wanted- not like this.

“Oh good, you’re awake. I was starting to really worry.”

Blaine turns his aching head, breathing harsh and fast through his nose. Is he still drunk? How long do the effects of alcohol last anyway? Because it’s either that or he’s suffered some sort of permanent brain damage.

“Hey, do you need to be sick again?”

Blaine nods, then shakes his head, then nods again and has to squeeze his eyes closed. It’s Kurt. Not Sebastian at all. Blaine opens his eyes and his mouth to speak as

Kurt crosses over to the bed and bends close to Blaine with worry knotting his lovely, lovely face.

He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t know what to say- 

“It’s you.”

A soft smile plays at the corners of Kurt’s lips, “It’s me.”

“How- I don’t-”

Kurt holds up a finger, turns and grabs a glass of water and two pills off the dresser. “Take these and drink all of this. You’ll feel better, trust me.”

Blaine does, the water a cool, welcome relief on his aching throat. Kurt sits down next to him. The water burbles in his stomach. At least he’s still fully dressed, minus his shoes.

“I went down to get a drink, and you were there at the bar in pretty rough shape. Word to the wise: Never let Sebastian Smythe buy you a drink.” Kurt nose scrunches in distaste. “We brought you up here when you started to uh- get sick.”

Blaine groans and drops his head into his hands. So he humiliated himself, great. “I’m so sorry.”

“Happens to the best of us,” Kurt says gently, “That’s how I discovered a Long Island Iced Tea is not at all what it sound like.” Blaine chances a look at him through his fingers and Kurt smiles. “Anyway, you sort of passed out up here after that and I wanted to make sure you were okay through the night so I-”

He gestures to a blanket and pillow on the floor. Blaine’s face heats up and he mumbles from behind his hands, “I am so embarrassed.”

“Don’t be. It’s fine.” Kurt stands up and busies himself with folding the blanket and setting it and the pillow at the end of his bed. Blaine watches him, looks around the room, and starts to feel marginally better.

It’s nice, papered in a textured white and filled with heavy wood-carved furniture. The back wall is mostly taken up by a huge bay window that opens to a balcony and lights up the entire room.

“I would have expected your room to be a little more flashy,” Blaine muses, his hangover apparently slowing down his normal politeness. 

“Oh, why is that?” Kurt asks, stopping with his hands on his hips.

Blaine shrugs a shoulder. “You’re just so dynamic on stage. I guess I just imagined something with more panache.”

Kurt lifts an eyebrow then says cooly, “Been imagining my room a lot?”

Blaine splutters and drinks the last dredges of water in an attempt to cover it up. “No, not- No.”

“I’m teasing,” Kurt reassures. “Now I’m sorry. This is my way of deflecting the fact that I’m nervous about having you here and I don’t really know what to say or if I’m making you uncomfortable and I should get your shoes and send you on your way-”

“You’re not-um,” Blaine pulls the covers off his legs and stands, weak and wobbly, but okay, he’s doing okay. He slips on his shoes and Kurt makes his way to the door. “I’m really grateful. In fact you should let me buy you breakfast. As a thank you. I mean, uh. After I’ve cleaned up a bit.”

“I-” Kurt puffs out a gust of air. “I shouldn’t.”

“You stayed with me all night, nursing me back to sobriety,” Blaine points out, following Kurt out of the room, hand braced along a wall to steady himself.

“I mostly wanted to make sure you didn’t choke on your own vomit,” Kurt replies dryly, with a hint of a teasing smirk.

“And I appreciate that. Quite a bit, actually.” Blaine goes for the wide, pouty eyes, hoping that Kurt isn’t somehow immune. “Please?”

“Okay,” Kurt sighs and holds up a finger. “One meal.”

“Deal,” Blaine grins and Kurt ducks his head as he smiles back and it’s quite possibly the most adorable thing Blaine has ever seen. Kurt starts to close the door behind him when something catches Blaine’s eye.

“Is that my hat?” He ducks back in to pick it up off the coat rack and plunks it on his head, realizing then that his hair is a disaster; puffy and wild. He pulls it down tighter. “Been looking for this.”

“I found it outside last week. You’d be surprised, the amount of clothing that gets left behind here,” He leans in closer. Blaine catches a whiff of his aftershave; a faint hint of citrus and spices. “I like that hat. You have excellent taste.”

Kurt strides off down the hall, and Blaine takes a moment to settle his spinning head and racing heart before following. “I really do.”

Rachel isn’t home, so he leaves Kurt in the living room with the radio turned to the local jazz station and only realizes how strange it is for him to be showering- wet, naked showering- with a man right in the other room. A very gorgeous, very interesting man, and somehow those facts do not help in the slightest.

He keeps the water at a cooler temperature than usual. 

But he does feel decidedly more human after he he’s done. His head still hurts and his stomach dry heaves occasionally. But mostly human. Then there is the issue of getting from the bathroom to his room in a towel. He momentarily considers Rachel’s fluffy pink robe, but decides that isn’t really much better. In the end he holds tightly to the towel and quickly shuffles down the hall with his head down and shoulders hunched.

He dresses quickly, but takes the time to fix his hair just right and knot a bow tie snug around his neck. He stands at his closed door, works his neck back and forth, shakes his shoulders out and takes a breath.

“Sorry for keeping you-” he starts, but is brought up short. Kurt is perched in a chair at the tiny table by the window, a wide sunbeam cast around him, legs crossed and arms settled on top. He tilts his head, ocean blue eyes and soft mouthed and pale skinned. He is so beautiful that Blaine’s entire body aches for him. And he has no idea what to do about that.

Kurt breaks the moment, looks away with a blush. “I got bagels.”

“Oh. Okay.” Blaine sits, stares dumbly at the bread spread out on the table.

“I’m guessing they don’t have bagels. Where you’re from.” Blaine look up. Blinks at him. “Which is…”

“Oh.” Blaine says again, then finally comes back to himself, shakes his head to clear it. “I mean. Ohio. And that’s not- No. We don’t.”

“Well,” Kurt replies, picking up one covered in tiny, dark seeds. “You’re in for a treat.”

Blaine manages to get a grip on himself while they eat and talk. He tells Kurt about leaving Ohio for wild adventures in New York, which makes Kurt smile. He feels almost as good as new after a bagel and coffee, and they are pretty amazing, actually. And so is Kurt. Not that he’s surprised.

Kurt tells him about growing up in Bushwick, how it feels like a different world from Manhattan sometimes. How he works as a tailor durning the week and performs on weekends. How he lives above The Oasis to save money and sends most of his paychecks to his father, who had to close his mechanic shop after falling ill. 

“That’s awful. I’m so sorry.” Blaine idly presses a finger tip to some of the seeds that fell off, guilt twisting his gut. He hasn’t even called his parents since leaving and here Kurt is sacrificing so much for his.

“We’ve had some tough times,” Kurt agrees, voice going a little husky. “But others have it much worse.”

Blaine swallows down another wave of sudden nausea. “Yeah.”

“And you? Life in Ohio not treating you well?” 

“It’s fine, actually. We’re doing okay. I just-” Blaine looks up, doesn’t know how to explain it or justify it. Why he left. Why he doesn’t want to go back. “I just don’t really want fine, I guess.”

Kurt hums and leans back in his chair, all broad shouldered and relaxed, quietly contemplative. “Sometimes fine is the best we can hope for. You may have noticed that I tend to stick out a bit wherever I go. There were days when being fine was more than I could ever hope for.” He leans forward again and reaches out, the backs of his fingers brushing Blaine’s. The touch zips though him like static electricity. “I have a good life. But I’ve had to accept that there are…things I will never have.”

Blaine looks away and out the window, all the wonderful chaos of the city of his dreams outside. He turns his hand over, fits Kurt’s palm inside of his. “Why can’t you? I refuse to just settle. We can both have what we want, Kurt.” He holds Kurt’s gaze and sets his jaw. A challenge. An implication. An offer.

“I should go.” Kurt stands, his chair scraping across the floor, the table wobbling with the abrupt movement.

“Kurt, wait-” He tries to follow but Kurt is already to the door, tossing a, “see you around,” before walking out.

And this time, Blaine decides he’s better off not following.

Thunderclap

1 part brandy

1 part gin

1 part whiskey

shake with ice, pour into glass and watch out


	6. The Gin Fizz

The walk to The Oasis that night feels different. For the first time the people rushing to and fro seem cold and uncaring, the streets filthy with trash and dirt and puddled motor oil. The groups of kids that joyously played stickball and pried open fire hydrants during the day now sit huddled together, skinny and owl-eyed and smeared with grime. 

Blaine stops and stares at the church he always passes, the wooden cross on the steepled roof straining up to the heavens, and realizes that the crowd of people he often sees gathered in hushed tones in front of it is actually a line up for a free meal.

At work he keeps his head down; delivers drinks and collects his tips with a wan smile. He doesn’t see Kurt, which is just as well.

Then when he gets back to the apartment and switches on the kitchen light, there’s a letter waiting for him on the table.

Blaine,

I see New York is treating you well. Hopefully not too well. Remember I was a boy once, too. I also sowed some wild oats before settling down for good. Don’t forget to confirm with OSU at your earliest convenience to claim your scholarship. I also sent along some information concerning pledging to Pi Kappa Alpha as a fraternity legacy to continue the family tradition. I look forward to settling these matters with you. Do not forget how lucky you are, son.

Best Regards,

Your father

Blaine stares at the letter, then out the window, dark against bright against dark, and goes to bed with a stone weighing down his stomach.

He decides to head in early the next day, finding the grey light of dusk to be heavy and morose, the air thick and sticking to his humid skin. It’s mostly empty inside, just Puck arranging and filling things at the bar, drying glasses. Blaine fidgets at the edge of the stage, then slides onto the piano bench, idly plunking some keys, then starts a slow drift into Mood Indigo, eyes closed, thinking.

Lucky. He is. But he sure as hell doesn’t feel like it.

“You were humming that when you…”

Blaine turns his head, lets his fingers take the song away, “Got embarrassingly drunk?”

“I was going to say weren’t feeling well, but that works.”

Blaine takes a slow breath in, then out with a sigh, lifts his hands from the keys and turns to straddle the bench. “I owe you an apology for the other night. I pushed you and I acted rashly and I seem to be doing a lot of that lately so-”

Kurt shakes his head, a quick, sharp, no. “You were right and that- I got scared and I ran out, I didn’t even explain.” His eyes flutter closed, fair silken eyelashes that Blaine wants to feel brush soft over his lips. “I never used to be someone who settled for what I could get. I think I needed a reminder of that.”

Kurt moves closer across the stage, standing just above Blaine so he has to look up, up into those eyes that set his pulse racing. The rock in his belly turns light and buoyant, his heart gives a sudden beat off-rhythm. 

“So as thanks I was hoping you’d accompany me to drinks and a show tomorrow night.”

“Like a date?” Blaine asks, heart beating hard against his chest.

Kurt smiles, hopeful. Relieved. “Like a date.”

He spends most of the next day in nervous anticipation. He sleeps in, then goes out with Rachel to buy food. She chats happily about nothing much, and Blaine is grateful for her happy presence. He gets a shoeshine while she haggles about the price of a loaf of sourdough from a street vendor, and tips the gangly cowlicked boy an extra fifty cents and an apple.

On the way back to Rachel’s they stop at a small park, setting their bags of groceries and a new tie for Blaine, a hair bow for Rachel, down on the other side of the bench before stopping to rest.

“Is it everything you dreamed of?” Rachel asks, arms sweeping out as if to gather up the city in her embrace.

Blaine leans back, face to the hot summer sun, the branches of the green tree above them. “It’s different. But yes. I just wish my dreams didn’t feel like they came at so high a cost. Like I have to turn my back on everyone.”

Rachel crosses her legs, fixes the hem of her skirt over her knee just right and says crisply, “That’s the difference between dreaming and achieving. Sometimes you have to hurt other people to get what you want.”

Blaine spends the rest of the afternoon washing and ironing his clothes, showering and dressing and agonizing over the way his hair is refusing to lay flat thanks to the wretched humidity. When Kurt knocks on the door at seven o’clock, he has no choice but to sigh and declare it good enough.

Kurt breathes his hello, fingers reaching out to brush Blaine’s tie. “I like this.”

“Thank you,” Blaine smiles, swallows.

The the temperature in the room seems to plummet. “Hello, Kurt.”

“Rachel.”

Blaine looks back and forth, back and forth. Kurt’s eyes are narrow and sharp, Rachel’s chin pointed up, lips slightly pursed. 

“We should uh-” Blaine snatches up his key and wallet and hat, hustling Kurt out the door and closing it behind them.

“You two know each other?” Blaine asks, following Kurt down the street. 

“Mmm,” Kurt stops on a busy corner, one foot off the curb, and flags down a cab coming their way. “She ruthlessly pursed a singing gig that was as good as mine. Does that to a lot of people.” Kurt watches the rush of traffic for moment, says with an indulgent eye roll, “Still, I do have to admire her moxie.”

They wind up at a handsome white pillared mansion in a part of the city Blaine didn’t even know existed; less developed but certainly upper class. They go around the back, as seems to be the custom, and Kurt gives the doorman some nonsensical password before turning to Blaine.

“It’s not The Duke at the The Cotton Club, but I have a feeling you’ll like this.”

It’s swanky, all massive sparkling chandeliers and tuxedoed table service and a full menu with prices that make Blaine gasp out loud. 

“Just drinks,” Kurt tells the waiter and orders for them both. “I hope that’s okay?”

Blaine nods, feeling distinctly out of place while he tries to call up his etiquette lessons from years ago, but mostly ends up staring at the line of overwhelming silver and ivory place settings that he can longer recall the purpose of.

A huge full band starts to file in and set up on the raised stage and as they start to tune their instruments Blaine takes a sip of his drink- sweet and mild, but he still wants to take it easy- and tries to calm his nerves.

“Kurt this is- You didn’t have to do all this.”

Kurt reaches across the table, his fingers covering Blaine’s, thumb sweeping Blaine’s knuckles. No one in the room seems to notice. Or care. “I know. But there’s something about you, something I can’t keep ignoring or running away from. I don’t know what kind of future we can have, or what this is. But for tonight- Let’s just not worry about that.”

Blaine presses his lips together, a swell of affection replacing the anxiety. “I’d like that.”

Her name is Mercedes. She is stunning.

“I told you,” Kurt murmurs between songs.

“Just ignore me if I start weeping,” Blaine hisses back. 

Kurt squeezes his hand again. “I’ll weep with you.”

Kurt ducks backstage after her set to say hello, dragging Blaine along. Blaine feels breathless and silly and so moved by her voice, like something still locked away has now broken free.

But she just hushes him and kisses Kurt’s cheek and thanks them for coming.

And if Blaine thought he was soaring as high as he could go from that, Kurt’s next surprise proves him wrong. 

“I never know what to expect from you,” Blaine tells him, but Kurt just laughs, pulling Blaine over to the edge, to the tallest building in the world. Up on top of everything.

“I watched them build this. I’d come once a week to check the progress and imagine myself up here. Then when it was done, I just never came back. I guess I forgot about it.” The wind ruffles Kurt’s hair, his face turning drawn and pensive in the muted light. 

“I still have the article our local newspaper wrote. My father used to complain about it all being an embarrassing waste of funds.” Blaine scans the wide expanse of lit up buildings across the dark sky, streets and parks and the water beyond. “But I always thought something that reached up to the stars could never be a waste.”

Kurt presses his back to the wall, watches Blaine for a long moment, long enough for Blaine to wonder if he’d upset him again, or if the date was over. One too fast magical evening that Blaine would tuck away, close to his heart, and never forget.

“Spend the night with me.” Kurt says, bold and plain and just that is enough to send a jolt of heat through Blaine body.

Looking out from the terrace of The Empire State building is terrifying and exhilarating and Blaine feels like he could reach out and skim his fingers along the sky. He wonders how high is too high. How painful the fall back down will be.

“Okay.”

Gin Fizz

2 parts gin

1 part fresh lemon juice

1 sugar cube

soda water

shake gin, juice and sugar with ice. Pour into glass and top with soda water.


	7. The Dirty Martini

His second time entering Kurt’s room is much more enjoyable, due somewhat to his not being blackout drunk, but also because Kurt laces their fingers together, leads Blaine up the front staircase and tugs him close once inside the dark room, the door closed and locked.

They stand almost chest to chest as Blaine tries to blink his eyes into seeing, the air thick between them, Blaine’s pulse racing. Kurt tips his head a fraction, moves in, nose brushing Blaine’s and pauses. Waits. A whimper climbs from Blaine’s throat and he closes the gap, presses his closed lips to Kurt’s and it’s-

Electricity. A bolt of lightning. And over way too quickly.

“Kurt?” 

Kurt backs away with a coy smile, eyes lowered, before fumbling in a dresser drawer then flicking a match on with a burst of light and puff of smoke. “Ambiance,” he explains. “Very important.”

And Blaine very much appreciates the attention to detail, he does, particularly when he notes that he can see Kurt much better, doesn’t actually want his memories of this to be mostly dark shapes shifting around in inky blackness. But right now he really just needs Kurt’s mouth back on his.

He’s surprised again by the noise he makes; a low growl this time, stalking across the room and cupping Kurt’s chin in his hand. He turns it to the side and kisses him again, hard and off-center and wanting.

“Stop making me chase you,” Blaine breathes against Kurt’s waiting mouth, presses in again and again until Kurt pulls away with a soft pop.

“Maybe I like it,” Kurt says, low and teasing. He pulls Blaine’s bottom lip into his mouth, sucks and nips it before moving away again. “But now that you’ve caught me, what would you like to do with me?”

All of Blaine’s desire and bravado skitter away from him then, because beyond knowing that this is right, this is what he wants, has never been more sure of anything; he doesn’t actually have any idea what to do now that he’s here. 

“Hey,” Kurt captures Blaine’s lips again, sweet and soft, before traveling across the sharp bone of his jaw, up to his ear to whisper, “It’s okay. Just relax.”

Blaine swallows and nods and stretches out his neck for Kurt’s exploring mouth. Kurt kisses and sucks, backs Blaine up to the bed until it hits his legs and he’s forced to sit. Kurt hovers over him for a moment, hands on Blaine’s shoulders.

“I’ll take care of you. Don’t worry.”

He moves to kneel down, nudging a leg between Blaine’s to widen them, but Blaine stops him with hands held tight to Kurt’s hips. He passes his thumbs over the curve of the jutting bones there, tries to gather his thoughts.

Blaine may be a little sheltered and from a small town, but he knows enough. He’s heard the rumors and gossip about men looking for sexual favors from other men. Married men who claim to be “just getting what they need.” He’s never wanted that. Not even when he was sure that would be his only option.

“I want you, Kurt. All of you.” He pulls Kurt close with both hands cupping Kurt’s face, trying to make Kurt feel that this isn’t about sex, not entirely. Tries to make him feel cherished, loved. Because-

Because that’s what happened. He fell in love with Kurt and he’s already too far gone to stop his own heart from being smashed to bits when it’s over.

“Yes, okay,” Kurt’s face morphs from sexy and coy to a boyish vulnerability. He shuffles onto the bed as Blaine scoots back so they can settle together, Kurt’s torso pressing him down into the soft bedding.

He gets lost in kissing Kurt, drowns in it, Kurt’s mouth hot and eager. He grasps at Kurt’s thick shoulders, his knotted biceps; grips tight to the broad planes of his back like Kurt is an anchor keeping him from being thrown adrift in a stormy sea.

“I want to see you,” Blaine manages to gasp out while Kurt works the skin under his opened collar. “Please.”

Kurt lifts his head, looks up at him with dark eyes and red lips, shirt wrinkled, a lock of hair falling across his forehead. Sinful. Blaine’s hips arch into nothing, his pants unbearably tight.

Kurt licks his swollen lips, shifts to his back and lifts Blaine’s hand, places it over his thudding heart. “Show me.”

Blaine focuses all of his concentration on making sure his hands don’t tremble as he slips the buttons on Kurt’s shirt open one by one, top to bottom, then pushes the thin white undershirt beneath up and up until it bunches under Kurt’s arms. Only then does he look, really look. Soft skin and hard lines of muscle, notches of hipbones and ribs. Blaine skims one hand over Kurt’s flat stomach, the raised definition of his pectorals, the tuft of hair in the center of his chest. Rubs circles around his pebbled pink nipples. 

Kurt moans and his back bows and Blainedid that, he made Kurt make that amazing wanton hitch of his breath, made him feel like that and suddenly this slow exploration is torture, not nearly enough.

Blaine is pretty sure he’s on the brink of combusting right there on Kurt’s bed. 

He unbuttons his own shirt only halfway before impatiently tearing it off over his head, grabs clumsily at the fasteners of Kurt’s pants while also trying to wriggle out of his own.

Kurt laughs and takes pity on his struggles, getting his own pants and underwear off, then helping Blaine with his and Blaine barely has time to feel a flush of embarrassment at being bared and exposed because Kurt- Kurt is stunning.

Blaine stretches his naked body over Kurt’s, nothing but heated skin and seeking mouths and the tickle of Kurt’s coarse leg hair shifting against his calves.

“Oh,” Blaine pants and gasps, can’t seem to remember how to properly draw air in and out of his lungs. He’s so hot, fire licking him from the inside, skin burning everywhere it touches Kurt’s.

“Yeah, yes.” Kurt brings his hands down, grips Blaine’s ass tight in his palms and Blaine is helpless, rutting and grinding his pelvis, cock dragging and slipping uncoordinated on Kurt’s stomach. Kurt encourages Blaine over to the side, nestling him between his strong thighs and that is much, much better.

It’s not unlike Blaine’s own, or at least it feels that way. Hard and long and pressed right up to Blaine’s. He thrusts down as Kurt thrusts up and bursts of light bloom across his vision. He needs to see, has to because everything is drawing up tight already, his muscles starting to shake, so he angles his head down on Kurt’s chest, curls his body and lifts his hips to watch the sinuous slide of Kurt’s dark cock against his own. Blaine’s leaking slit rubbing a long line up the thick of Kurt’s shaft, bumping against the ridge of the head. 

Blaine comes instantly.

Kurt pets his back as he spasms and spurts, then gently tips them both to the side while Blaine settles into buzzing bliss.

“Wow. That was. Wow.”

Kurt props himself on an elbow, smirks down at Blaine’s goofy grin. “Very eloquent.”

Blaine just grins harder, has to kiss him but can’t stop smiling, so it’s mostly Kurt laughing against his stretched lips.

“Oh,” Blaine says, sitting up now that he can move his limbs again. “What can I-”

He gestures down Kurt’s body, struck dumb all over again at seeing him, that this is really happening; Kurt’s gorgeous body, his gently hanging balls and wiry dark hair and his cock full and straining up. Blaine’s come is still on Kurt’s stomach and chest in glistening strands. His own cock gives a painful twitch.

“Hold that thought,” Kurt stands to dig around in the same dresser drawer, giving Blaine a lovely view of his pert backside, his face drawn in frustration until he finds and brandishes a tube of KY Jelly.

“Anything you don’t like, just say so,” Kurt says, kneeling on the bed and nudging Blaine back down with a fingertip until Blaine is spread on his back. He draws that same finger down Blaine’s chest, sternum to navel, over the slight curve of his belly, down one leg until he reaches the back of Blaine’s knee and hooks it up and out at an angle.

Blaine’s whole body throbs in time to the thump-thump, thump-thump of his heart. He closes his eyes, feels Kurt curl up next to his side. Hears a click and a squelch, then Kurt’s finger again: slick and cool and rubbing gentle circles against his asshole.

Blaine jolts like he’s touched a live wire. 

“Yes or no?” Kurt asks, his slick hand held in the air in the narrow space left between Blaine’s thighs. Blaine takes a breath, says, “Yes,” and spreads his bent knees as far he can in invitation.

Kurt groans helplessly at that, surging forward to kiss him open-mouthed, slipping his tongue past Blaine’s lips as his finger nudges him again, circles and rubs, then pushes inside.

Blaine wriggles on the bed, breathing harsh through his nose; it’s strange but not unpleasant, a wet sort of intrusion, until Kurt adds a second finger and the stretch stings and burns. Kurt kisses and kisses him; on his lips, his cheeks, the delicate skin of his eyelids, whispering encouragement and praise.

“You are,” Kurt says, reverent, coaxing Blaine’s body open, “breathtaking.”

The more Kurt fills and stretches him the better it feels; the more open he is, the more he wants, wants all of it. Blaine surrenders, gives himself over to sensation and desire until his cock is hard and searching again, leaving smears of wet when it bobs against his belly. His head is thrown back, hands clenched in his own hair, he feels his body start to strain towards completion again and grunts Kurt’s name.

Kurt turns him over onto his stomach, hovers over on hands and knees, lips on Blaine’s sweat-slick neck and nudges just the spongy tip of his cock where Blaine is wet and open and waiting.

“Yes or no?”

“Yes,” Blaine says, face pushed into the pillow, Kurt’s weight settling over him and inching in, past the resistance, past the tightness; Blaine’s body gentling open for him. 

“Yes,” Blaine says again, a litany of yeses, a plea, a prayer. Kurt pushes in, in, all the way, so full, so amazingly full and it’s so, so much and he’s so very close.

Kurt pulls out and pushes back in and Blaine keens a noise he’s never made in his life, twists the sheets in his hands. Kurt is a heavy press of heat and shifting muscle on his back, rocking his hips so sweetly, so slowly, pushing Blaine to the edge and back with every thrust in.

They pick up speed soon enough; the bed squeaking beneath them and the blankets bunched under Blaine’s knees and elbows, everything aching and quivering in the best possible way. 

Kurt shoves a hand under Blaine, pushes him up higher on his knees just a bit, just enough to wrap his fingers around Blaine’s cock and pump him in time with the snap of his hips. He finds Kurt’s mouth, just pants into it and Kurt into his, holds on and holds on while Kurt fucks into him hard and fast and without any finesse at all now. 

A bite on his shoulder, then Kurt freezes and pulses inside of him. Blaine follows with a cry, losing his grip, slipping over the edge and down. 

“Stay with me. Yes or no?” Kurt mumbles, slumped to the side, tucked under Blaine’s limp arm, breath slow and words slurred with sleep.

Blaine holds him tighter, places his mouth on Kurt’s sweaty temple, leaves it there as Kurt drifts to sleep. He doesn’t answer. 

Dirty Martini

2 parts gin

1 part vermouth

splash of olive brine

Stir with ice, strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with an olive.


	8. The Morning Glory

Blaine makes himself get out of bed. Walks across the smooth, cool floor that cracks and groans under his bare feet while Kurt still sleeps soundly. He runs a bath, sits with his knees drawn up to his chest and watches the steam from the water rise lazy and drifting. He starts to scrub the sliver of brown soap over his goose-bumped skin, but it slips out of his fingers and down into the water like some kind of ridiculous metaphor.

He dresses and laces up his shoes. Kurt sleeps on. So Blaine doesn’t tell him goodbye. Doesn’t give him one last lingering kiss because if he does he’ll never ever leave and he has to. He has this whole life and he can’t just- He can’t.

Kurt stirs, rolling to his stomach and Blaine’s eyes sting and his throat closes at the slope of Kurt’s back, the breadth of his shoulders, the fan of his lashes. The contented sigh from his mouth. 

He and Kurt can never be what he wants. He wants a life he can never have. And Quinn was right: he was better off not knowing that all of this was here. That Kurt was here. His life would always have been a melancholy sort of happiness instead, but better that than feeling like his chest has been clawed open and scooped out; left empty and cavernous and cold.

He goes out the front door, too many memories to go through The Oasis, the echoes of people and song and laughter and the sort of carefree spirit he can no longer quite bear. 

It’s late morning, garish with sunlight and endless blue sky. The city with its wave after wave of life, of joy and sorrow and love and loss and Blaine understands now, the point of getting swallowed up in a place like this. Head down, hat low, collar up and get on with it.

He presses it all down and away, no sense dwelling, no sense wishing and maybe if he tells himself he’s fine for long enough no one will ever know, not even him. Not even the one person who could see beyond the masks he’s had to wear just to keep safe and she is…

Sitting in Rachel’s living room. With two suitcases and her school bag perched at her feet, dressed in her Sunday best with a rope of pearls around her neck; prim and poised, as if she just happened to drop by for brunch.

“Quinn?” Blaine stares and looks around like more people from his life may pop out from behind the stove or emerge from a cabinet. “You’re here?”

“I’m here.” She stands from the couch, where Rachel has tea and the anise cookies from that Italian bakery Blaine has recently grown fond of.

She pulls him close and god, it’s like home. It’s exactly what he needs so he lets himself melt into her embrace, lets his body flush with the hurt and the anger and the exhaustion. 

“Hey, honey. Who died, hmm?” She rubs Blaine’s back and chuckles, then pulls away and adds with horror, “No one actually died, did they?”

“No,” Blaine laughs and sniffles, and doesn’t care that his voice squeaks and cracks. “I have to go home,” he says and swallows down how much it pains him to say that, but- 

“Wait, what are you doing here?”

At that Quinn beams, steps back and grips his hands, swinging them between their bodies. “I accepted the offer from Barnard. I was so disappointed in myself for not coming with you when you were so brave. And then you sent me that postcard, and all of a sudden being in Lima was just so pointless. I finally just…left.”

“I’m not brave,” Blaine says. He drops Quinn’s hands and backs away. He can’t ruin both of their lives, he can’t let her throw everything away because he was too short-sighted and rash to think through his choices.

Rachel jumps from the couch, offering to make more tea even though Blaine knows what a luxury it is for her, and that the tea she already made is still hot in the mugs on a side table. 

“We’re going home,” Blaine says, heading to his bedroom to pack. Rachel bangs the tea kettle onto the stove.

“No,” Quinn says, sharp tone now matching his. “We aren’t.”

“Yes we are Quinn. We can’t just turn our backs on the life we’re supposed to have for some flight of fancy! This isn’t a silly schoolyard dream. This is reality.”

Rachel bustles around the kitchen, opening drawers and running water to drown them out. Blaine yanks his suitcase onto the bed, furiously wiping away at the hot tears he can’t seem to stop.

“Blaine,” Quinn says, much softer, a hand on his shoulder. “That reality is someone else’s idea of what your life should be. I know you know that. What is really going on?”

“I can’t just-” Blaine stops and shakes his head and it’s like he can’t understand anything anymore, when did everything get so damned complicated. He shudders a breath. “I think I just walked away from the love of my life.”

Quinn removes the handle of the suitcase from his white-knuckled grip, sets it on the bed and gives him that sharp look that never fails to cut him to the quick. “Well that’s easy enough. Go get him, you idiot.”

Blaine’s eyebrows pull in, he opens his mouth to argue but stops. What if. What if he just didn’t do what was expected of him. Not for a quick adventure. Not to sow some wild oats before he got on with his life. But for good.

“Yeah, I-” Blaine bounces on his toes, grips Quinn’s shoulders for emphasis. “Quinn I have to go get him!”

She shakes his shoulders back and replies, “I know!”

“Oh but I can’t just leave you! You just got here!” She came all this way, for him, because of him.

“I’ll be fine,” Quinn scoffs. “I’m pretty tough. Besides, Rachel can show me around.”

“Right, okay.” Blaine tips his head back and forth, finally releases Quinn. “I’m a little afraid of leaving you two alone, actually. But okay.”

“Blaine, I can handle it. Go.”

“Right. Yes. Going.” He runs to the door, out into the hall, then stops so quickly that he slips and slides on the woven rug lining the hallway to rush back. “I have to call my parents!”

Blaine grips the phone with sweaty hands, paces the floor back and forth and back while he waits for the operator to connect the call. Passes the window where Quinn and Rachel are chatting on the fire escape to give him some privacy- and really, he does worry about the combined willpower and cutthroat determination of those two- a click, and his mother’s voice.

“Blaine.”

He can’t dwell on the short, sharp way she says his name, so he barrels ahead. “I just need to let you know that I’m staying in New York. Not for the summer. For good. I can’t go to OSU, I don’t belong there. I belong here. And I’m sorry for not telling you sooner and I’m so, so sorry for disappointing you.”

Blaine pulls in a shuddering breath and presses the heel of his free hand to his eyes. He doesn’t want to let his parents down. He wishes, so badly, that he could be the son that they want him to be.

“Blaine.” It’s softer now, patient.

“Yes?”

“You know we aren’t thrilled about it. But I can’t say that I’m terribly surprised. We suspected as much from the lack of communication so far. You do know we’ve gone through this already with your brother.”

“Yes, ma’am. Of course I didn’t mean-”

“Sweetheart, let me finish.” He can hear rustling, the soft creak of the oversized wingback chair in the formal sitting room. He can imagine her perched there, long skirt draped over her crossed legs, hair styled and pinned back save for those rebellious curls at her temples that she can never keep under control in the humid summertime. 

“But all we really want is for you to be happy. Are you happy?”

The sudden homesickness hits him like a punch to the gut, but, “Yes. I am.”

He runs back to Kurt’s. It gets him several glares and one rather unpleasant phrase hurled at him, so he runs backwards to yell his apology, then accidentally interrupts a game of Double Dutch. He throws his hands out and decides to back up and jump thorough the ropes, leaving behind a group of giggling, squealing little girls. 

When he bangs open the back door he darts through some of the dancers that are either coming or going, Blaine isn’t sure and doesn’t stop to find out, up the stairs and through the door where Kurt is still fast asleep. 

Stripped to his underwear, Blaine peels back the covers, kicks off the leg of his pants that won’t let go, and slips back in.

“Hey,” Kurt says, muffled through the blanket, “Where’d you go?”

“Had a phone call to make,” Blaine replies, getting comfortable and wiggling in close to the heat of Kurt’s body.

Kurt slings an arm over his chest. “Were you forced to run wind sprints while you made it? Your heart is racing.”

“I just wanted to get back to you.” Kurt smiles into Blaine’s neck, purses his lips to smack a kiss there. “By the way,” Blaine continues, “the answer to your question is yes.”

Kurt makes a questioning noise as his mouth gets a little bolder, a little more urgent.

“I’m staying. For good.”

Kurt doesn’t respond, not with words, but he wraps a leg over Blaine’s pelvis, the blatant evidence of his approval pressing hard against Blaine’s thigh. And as much as he wants to just give himself over to pleasure and to Kurt’s body, he can’t quite yet.

“You should know that I’m in love with you.”

Kurt doesn’t pause, just starts a slow slide of his long, lean body against Blaine’s, kisses him with lips dragging and tongue tracing. “Good,” he says.

“Good?” 

“Mmhm,” His fingers dip underneath the elastic of Blaine’s underwear and very soon Blaine will no longer be capable of having a conversation of any sort, let alone one as important as this. 

“Because,” Kurt continues, “I’ve pretty much been in love with you since the moment I saw you. So it’s nice to have you onboard as well.”

Blaine wonders if he will spend the rest of his life trying to catch up with Kurt, has no idea how Kurt is always darting around ahead of him, like a hummingbird that Blaine keeps trying to cup in his palms. If he’ll spend the rest of his life trying to figure Kurt out.

He really, really hopes so.

“So now what?” Blaine gasps out, Kurt’s fingers tiptoeing down the join of Blaine’s thigh and pelvis, skimming up the swelling curve of his shaft.

“I may have some ideas,” Kurt says, teasing again.

Blaine sinks a hand into Kurt’s hair, brings him down for a kiss before gripping his wrists and flipping them. Kurt’s eyes widen, his body stretching taut under Blaine’s.

Blaine grins, triumphant. Maybe Kurt isn’t the only one who can be surprising.

Morning Glory

equal parts brandy and whiskey

3 dashes simple syrup

2 dashes curacoa liqueur

1 dash absinthe

twist of lemon peel

two cubes of ice

Stir and remove ice. Fill glass with soda water, then stir with spoon dipped in sugar.


	9. The Hot Toddy

There’s this diner, a typical greasy spoon, nothing particularly special about the place to set it apart from all the other greasy spoons that dot almost every street corner. Except for the cherry pie. The best cherry pie in the city. Quite possibly the entire country. 

Cherry pie that is entirely worth Blaine getting off the subway three stops early and walking the rest of the way with his teeth clenched against their chattering, his coat pulled up tight around his neck. Ears and nose numb, and eyes watering from the blasts of frigid air, just so he can stop in for two fat, fresh slices. 

A few lost snowflakes scatter around his head in swirls as he approaches their block, Blaine tucks his prize closer to his chest- still warm, just barely- and heads home.

“I have a confession to make.” Blaine kicks the door shut, sniffles and shivers and tries to stamp some feeling back into his toes. Kurt comes down the hallway finishing his task of buttoning each pearled button on his pajama shirt, one eyebrow lifted. 

“I really only stayed here for the food.” 

Kurt oohs and takes the paper bag, brushing a kiss to Blaine’s cheek. “It’s alright. I don’t blame you.”

Kurt opens and closes a drawer in the kitchen, silverware clinking about, as Blaine sets his keys and change on top of the battered old piano Kurt managed to both scrounge up and get into the apartment somehow. 

Now that Blaine has taken over as full-time pianist (after an unpleasant incident involving the old piano player, a bottle of absinthe, and Chopin’s Funeral March) and part-time singer at The Oasis, he needs the practice.

“You’re coming to bed with me,” Kurt says, raspy and wanting and Blaine would normally feel an instant zap of arousal up his spine, if only Kurt wasn’t talking to the pie.

“Should I give you two some time alone?” Blaine calls as Kurt retreats down the hall.

“Don’t be jealous, Blaine. It doesn’t suit you.” 

Kurt disappears into the room, so Blaine shrugs off his heavy winter coat, the sweater underneath; he feels warmer already despite the apartment being perpetually chilly in the month or so since they’d moved in. He wishes, not for the first time, that they had a fireplace. But they were fortunate to get a modern two bedroom for the price they did, even if the ‘state of the art’ furnace often leaves a lot to be desired.

But it’s nice and a good location, and they have food and a roof over their heads and most importantly, it’s theirs. 

Blaine bypasses the second bedroom, technically his, not that he spends much time in there, to find Kurt reclining on the bed against the headboard, unfolded wax paper and pie on his lap with a fork in one hand and book in the other. He changes into the matching pajamas that Kurt bought for him (no, coordinating pajamas, Kurt always insists) the day he moved out of Rachel’s.

Speaking of. “Rachel says hello.”

“Hmmm,” Kurt replies, snaps a page over in his book.

“You love her,” Blaine sing-songs, settling cross-legged next to him, the bed dipping and Kurt’s warm body tilting into his.

“I occasionally tolerate her presence,” Kurt sniffs. 

“That’s why you two were holding each other and sobbing in the movie theater at the end of The Champ.”

“Hey,” Kurt protests, swallowing a bite and poking Blaine in the center of his chest, “if you didn’t cry at the end of that movie you are made of stone and ice.”

Blaine thumbs a bit of red filling smeared on the corner of Kurt’s mouth, sucks it off and says, “Well, it is pretty cold out there. I might be made of ice now. Warm a fellow up, would you?”

Kurt grins that soft smile that still sets something fluttering in Blaine’s chest; sets his pie and book to the side and leans in, mouth pressed to Blaine’s as they shuffle down onto the bed. Blaine gets his arms under Kurt, his legs between, then tucks his head into Kurt’s neck.

“Did you make it to see Quinn, too?” Kurt asks, fingers scratching through the hair at the nape of Blaine’s neck. Blaine hums, purrs really. Kurt knows what that does to him. “And?” Kurt prompts.

“Great. Taking the academic world by storm of course.” She’s thriving and more vibrant than Blaine has ever seen her. Even in her drab gray dorm room with a roommate who is a tad too enthusiastic about Blaine. Quinn has told her to back off. It would be nice if she could explain why.

Blaine sighs, letting himself being bitter for just a moment. It’s fine. Kurt is here and he is here and as for the rest of the world- Well, they aren’t here at all.

“Warm yet?” Kurt asks, hand moving down to rub circles on Blaine’s back.

“No,” Blaine says, lifting his head to look up at Kurt through his lashes. “I think I need a lot more kissing. That should help.”

“Incorrigible,” Kurt sighs, slipping his parted lips between Blaine’s; sweet and tart and hungry. Hungry for Blaine this time, and it does start a low furling of heat from his belly, spreading out along his body.

Maybe they only have this space and The Oasis and few close friends who can know. Maybe they have to take Quinn and Rachel along on movie dates or picnics in Central Park or fancy dinners. 

Maybe his life doesn’t look the way he imagined it. Certainly not the way his parents imagined it.

But he’s happy. Really, truly happy. In the city that he now calls home. With this man that he calls his. 

“Can I put my mouth on you?” Blaine says, when they come up for air.

Kurt’s eyes are soft and tender, his hand cupping Blaine’s cheek and thumb stroking across his cheekbone. “Of course, Love.”

Blaine smiles at the endearment, moving down, down Kurt’s lithe body, pressing him flat to his back and taking Kurt’s silky pajama bottoms down with him.

He takes Kurt into his mouth before he’s fully hard, closing his eyes and moaning happily as Kurt’s cock goes rigid and full and heavy against his tongue. Blaine lifts his head, then swallows him down; Kurt’s hands gripping tight in his hair.

It doesn’t take long, not now that Blaine has gotten very good at this, is no longer embarrassed at how much he loves it, how much he loves the way Kurt reacts. The way he smells, the way he tastes, how he sighs Blaine’s name at the end.

Blaine kneels up, leans back on his heels and wipes a hand across his mouth. Kurt stretches and grins and once again makes Blaine marvel at his easy beauty, his quiet radiance. The vulnerability he only ever shows to Blaine.

“How did I ever manage without you?” Kurt says, dopey and low in the way his voice gets after sex.

“I have no idea,” Blaine quips. But he wonders the same thing. And he tries to never forget how close he was to missing out on this entirely. As it turns out, his father wasn’t completely wrong. He is lucky.

Kurt hooks two fingers in the stretchy waistband of Blaine’s pants, tucking it underneath the hang of his balls and upward strain of his cock.

“You seem a little melancholy,” Kurt says, grip loose, strokes slow. “Want to talk about it?”

Blaine moans and lolls his head, his body going heavy and loose. “Just thinking about how I wish some things would change, I guess.”

“Everything changes eventually.” 

Tighter, faster, a steady pull. Blaine’s hips cant, he stutters out a groan. “But for the better?”

“Maybe,” Kurt says. He scrambles up to his knees as Blaine sways unsteadily, loops Blaine’s arms around his shoulders. Blaine holds on tight as Kurt starts to pull faster and faster, to twist his wrist the way Blaine likes. “I’ve got you.” 

“Yes,” Blaine moans. 

“Whatever happens, we’ll do it together, okay? The next great adventure.”

Blaine grunts and gasps and comes and comes and Kurt strokes him through it. Kurt is there. He sinks down against him, humming and content to the marrow of his bones. Kurt removes Blaine’s soiled shirt, tips Blaine’s chin up to so he’s looking into Kurt’s eyes; always the blue-green of endless sky.

“Feeling adventurous, Love?” Kurt grins. Blaine kisses him, smiles back.

“Always.”

Hot Toddy

hot water

1 spoonful sugar

splash lemon juice

2 measures rum

Put sugar and lemon juice in a mug and fill with boiling water. Add rum. Stir.


End file.
